The present invention pertains to a sourcing-provider-implemented, electronic-commerce method carried out over an electronic communication network, such as the Internet, for controlling acquisition-access to electronically-deliverable, affinity-interest deliverables in portions of which rights are held both by such a provider and by one known as a contributing network communicant.
In the practice of the invention, an entrepreneurially vetted network communicant, also referred to as a network peer, is authorized by a person called a sourcing-provider to use his or her active entrepreneurial talent, to promote, to other network communicants, commercial access to a controlled, network-connected catalogue of electronic deliverables, such as electronic media-content (music, film, electronic applications) deliverables, made available by deliverables rights-holders, including, as rights-holders, both such a sourcing-provider, and a vetted, contributing network communicant. The term “media” employed herein, and throughout the underlying history of this application, has been used in its broadest sense to include and mean “electronic deliverables” and “electronic media-content deliverables” in all categories of such deliverables.
Deliverables rights-holders, also referred to herein as legal persons, or personages, may be drawn from all categories of such persons (legal persons)—i.e., individuals, business entities, etc.—who are, or may be, involved in different ways with the creation of all or parts of the architectures and contents that characterize catalogue deliverables. Such rights-holders may include, for examples, a record label, a movie label, an artist, a software designer, such as a software-platform designer, and also what we call a “vetted, contributing” network communicant who might create, as an illustration, an electronic application based upon the software-platform contribution of a software-platform designer, etc. There are various illustrations of the latter kind of catalogue deliverable, as, for example, the recorded musical artistry of a musician which artistry conventionally “rests upon”, and combines with, underlying music-mix-and-editing software/architecture furnished by a promotional-, a technical-, and/or an engineering-, furnisher of that “rested-upon” electronic portion of a music media deliverable.
Catalogue deliverables are also termed herein affinity-interest deliverables, or affinity-interest subject matter.
As will be seen, the invention specifically addressed herein forms a contribution to the art which is contained as one of the several facets of such contributions that are expressed in the body of disclosure presented both hereinbelow, and in the above-identified, precursor, provisional and regular U.S. patent applications (sometimes with different, specific language, or terminology, e.g., “peer” vs. “network communicant”). This newly addressed facet relates (as will be seen from the invention description which is provided below) to an aspect of an earlier (herein in the underlying history of this application) focused-upon facet which is associated with conventionally understood P2P file-sharing behaviors wherein P2P file sharers introduce, for network communication to other peers, additions to, and/or modifications of, digital, media-file content which has been created by another party, i.e., content involving their own creative efforts. The facet illustrated and discussed in this application involves this just-mentioned “addition”-type behavior.
Continuing, the invention facet illuminated herein (as suggested above) focuses particular attention on communication-network methodology associated with operative, commercial relationships established between different legal personages herein named (a) sourcing-provider (an identifying name previously employed in the predecessor cases), (b) network communicant (a peer), (c) vetted network communicant (a vetted peer), and (d) contributing network communicant (a category of peer explained below).
In a more specific sense, and in the context of outlining its realm of operation and its basic steps, the present invention may be described as a sourcing-provider-implemented, electronic-commerce, communication-network method for controlling commercial-transaction network-acquisition-access to particular, electronically-deliverable, affinity-interest deliverables in portions of which rights are held both by a sourcing provider and by a contributing network communicant, where (a) a sourcing-provider is a legal person having a common interest in all, relevant, affinity-interest deliverables, (b) a network communicant is a legal person having an affinity attachment to defined, electronically-deliverable, affinity-interest subject matter which may become associated by that network communicant with an affinity-interest deliverable, and (c) a contributing network communicant is an entrepreneurially-vetted and authorized network communicant.
The method is confinedly implementable in a network of the kind mentioned, and includes, as steps: (1) establishing an electronic, network-connected, sourcing-provider-associated and controlled catalogue designed to contain at least one such deliverable; (2) vetting the entrepreneurial talent of at least one network communicant in relation to the creation, catalogue-placement, and network-acquisition-promotional offering to others, by that one communicant of such a deliverable, whereby, through deliverable-creation and catalogue-placement thereof, the vetted network communicant becomes a contributing network communicant; (3) authorizing the vetted network communicant to become a contributing network communicant, and to create, to place or have placed, and to offer to other network communicants, commercial-transaction, deliverables-acquisition network access to such a catalogue-placed deliverable; and (4) rewardingly incentivizing such network-acquisition offers made by the contributing network communicant.
In the specification text which follows, the above legal-personage terms herein employed as names that are considered to be especially appropriate to the disclosed, and below-claimed, invention methodology, along with expositions characterizing the methodologic working relationships between, and associated with, them, are woven at useful locations into the immediate predecessor case's appropriately restated and edited text.
In the below, more detailed description of the invention and its operating environment, the invention is illustrated and explained in the context of the other facets of the invention elaborated heretofore, i.e., in the context of a network computer-implemented methodology for enhancing computer-network commerce, such as Internet commerce, illustratively associated with the related, widespread and significant, affinity-interest practice known as peer-to-peer (P2P) network file sharing, and also with naturally associated, commercial-fulfillment system-management methodology that may be implemented under the control and/or management assistance of a system manager regarding deliverables-purchases fulfillment. The invention strongly links with computer support of such associated methodology as it relates to the unique, commerce-spurring use of digital media, and like electronically deliverable, files as a powerful vehicle for enhancing and growing areas of commerce.
System management in this context of purchasable deliverables includes, of course, all sales-support, including ancillary-support management functions that are normally associated with such management. With this system setting in mind, we further point out that practice of the present invention may take place in the setting of system management and fulfillment activities that are furnished in relation (a) to plural “areas” of affinity-interest commerce activities, such as those linked to plural, widely distributed, different-affinity-interest network-groups, and therefore (b), also to functionally associated, network-communicant-utilized, widely distributed networked computers, servers and databases that are functionally linked, and readily accessible by such participants, en masse, over an extensive computer network. Those skilled in the art will recognize that, in this setting of the invention, networked consumer participants/communicants need only possess, or have appropriate use-access to, what is, by today's standards, a relatively simple electronic computer, or the like, to experience and participate in invoking the unique features of the invention.
With respect to the “en masse” reference just made above, FIG. 2 in the drawings herein, as will be more fully explained, and as will be apparent to those skilled in the “art” of networks, such as the Internet, illustrates an elemental, network “plurality”, or subassembly, region, i.e., a region which forms a “building-block” element that is multipliable open-endedly to create a plurality of such regions, in an extensive, en masse network regime.
Speaking now in a background and setting manner about the present invention in the representative arena of the world of file-sharing, and using principally the term “peer” (synonymous herein with the term “network communicant”), it is well known and recognized today that the practice of peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing over a wide-area network, such as the Internet, is one of the most popular and rapidly expanding practices in history. This practice, which grows dramatically even as we now speak about it, is readily accessible and practicable, utilizing any one of a relatively widely available array of available P2P file-sharing intercommunication technologies, by essentially all in the world who have computer access to the Internet.
Unfortunately, and we believe mistakenly, P2P file sharing has, in the last few years, come to be viewed by some as an enemy of certain commerce—particularly commerce involving provider-controlled electronically distributable media content, such as music and movie files. In this “enemy” mode of thinking, the various conflicts which have arisen between P2P file sharers, providers of communication software/technology which enables P2P file sharing, and copyright rights holders (providers) associated with such electronic media content, have centered on the issue of apparent massive copyright infringement in the form of file acquisitions and use without payments to rights holders. These conflicts have unhappily pitted certain among these parties against one another as hostile legal combatants.
Notwithstanding this landscape of “copyright contention”, the present invention, in its proposed unique methodology and systemic management approach to the world of P2P file sharing, recognizes and proposes a paradigm shift based upon a recognition that the extraordinary and massive communication, computing, and data-storage and handling bandwidth which is represented by the world of P2P file sharing can, in fact, be tapped creatively, along with the affinity interests of P2P file sharers, as vehicles and growth engines for the promotion, expansion and impressive enlarging of many forms of commerce, including commerce relating to electronically distributable media per se.
By proposing, as underlies a principal cornerstone of the present invention, a significant change in the thinking about how P2P file sharing, and associated software and communication technologies, can be constructively employed, and indeed how a network-accessing “purchasing consumer”—another network communicant—can be converted effectively to become a positive part of the distribution “machinery” of network-purchasable deliverables, one can be brought to recognize that P2P file sharing offers an unparalleled and historically monumental opportunity for the expansion of commerce in many, if not all, forms of goods and services under the dominion of parties both inside and outside of the P2P network world. It can do this quite simply through harnessing the unique and specialized entrepreneurial talents, behaviors and the enthusiasms of P2P electronic-media file sharers, in a kind of piggyback fashion, to link with the communication traffic most affectionately focused upon by P2P affinity-group file sharers specially permitted, managed, controlled and appropriately, ultimately fulfilled offers of sales for various goods and services.
Such goods and services may reside (a) only in the field of electronic media (such as music song, film, and software application, files), (b) only in a variety of ancillary fields which are outside the electronic media field, and which may not be specifically “affinity-interest” subject matter, and or (c) in a blend of these two fields. Accordingly, it should be understood that references made herein to a catalogue, or to catalogues, i.e., physical, digital-data catalogue(s), of deliverables are intended to convey the understanding that such deliverables may “reside” in any one of these single or blended “fields”, in the form of representative, or appropriately representing, electronic data which, through transformation into sound, into computer screen imagery, etc., is “viewable in and from” such a catalogue. In fact, and as will be well understood by those skilled in the art, the catalogue electronic representations of these deliverables may “sit” in a widely distributed condition electronically in and throughout the cloud defining part of a network. As will be seen, much subject matter which is sale-offered in a network setting in the context of the present invention, either directly is, or becomes “associated” as being ancillary to, affinity-interest subject matter.
For example, and as an important illustration for describing the context of the present invention, a very good and representative P2P affinity group might be a group of such file sharers who have a special interest in a particular style, or genre, of music, or a similar affinity group with a special interest in various computer-hardware-implementable applications. There are, of course, many other relevant examples of affinity groups, and practice of the present invention is not constrained just to “music genre” and “applications-genre” groups. Put another way, implementation and practice of the present invention offers special opportunities for significant expansion of commerce, in addition to electronic media commerce, through what are referred to herein as collateral income-generating transactions, in the contexts of many different affinity-group interests covering a very wide range of subject matters.
The term “collateral” used herein is intended to refer to transactions which are other than conventional, basic file-sharing transactions. The term refers generally to what might be thought of as being “heightened” file-share transactions involving peer-to-peer entrepreneurial activity, as will be explained. A collateral transaction, for example, might be the electronic acquisition by one peer of a music song file, paid for by that peer to the copyright rights holder associated with that file, where the acquisition ultimately results from a peer-to-peer entrepreneurial promotion. A collateral transaction might also be a peer-to-peer-promoted acquisition of some other kind of deliverable, including a peer-specific deliverable, which is not a music, or other electronic, file, and which takes place for fulfillment in the context of an affinity file-share event. Other kinds of collateral transactions, within the imaginations of those implementing the present invention, may of course be accommodated. Indeed, collateral transactions for system manager fulfillment may include an interesting, fulfillable aggregation, or pluralities of fulfillable aggregations, of affinity-interest subject matter, along with various ancillary subject matter.
Specific illustration of management fulfillment in the world of the present invention, and, in particular, in the realm of distributable electronic media and associated affinity-interest subject matter is selected herein because of the extraordinary nature today of P2P file sharing of electronic media, and because of the potentially defusible (by practice of the invention) combative relationships which have surfaced as a consequence of P2P electronic media file sharing. As one will see from a reading of the description of the present invention along with the accompanying, illustrative block/schematic diagrams, practice of the present invention offers a clear opportunity for electronic media rights holders to recognize a very positive market-expansion force, tappable through “viewing” P2P file sharers not as enemies, but rather as powerful entrepreneurial-talent allies. Such an ally relationship can be realized through creating a low-participation-cost environment involving effective sanctioning of P2P file sharing of electronically deliverable files under circumstances where ancillary revenue is stimulated by the reward-based harnessing of the natural entrepreneurial enthusiasms and marketing ingenuities of selected P2P affinity-group members (vetted network communicants, still to be more fully described) to make offerings for sale of selected electronic-media materials.
As will become understood from a reading of the description of the invention, its practice, both in the current, and herein illustrative, high-profile world of P2P file sharers, and in the worlds of other types of affinity-interest “network consumers”, effectively causes the relevant consumer population to become part of the mechanism of deliverables-distribution, thereby overcoming, in the case of protected deliverables content, such as electronic media content, the unacceptable instinct for one singly to acquire such content without directing payment to content rights holders.
As one illustration of practice of a facet of the invention generally, P2P file sharers (in a group) who have an affinity interest in a particular kind of music are encouraged to become subscribers to a sanctioned (copyright-liability sanctioned, or freed) P2P file sharing community for the payment of (a) modest monthly fees, and (b) modest additional fees (or selectively in some instances, as with “older” media subject matters, no fees) associated with acquisitions (downloads) of particular media song files. Such song files are additionally referred to herein as rights-associated media, with respect to which copyright owners' rights are referred to as possessor-owned relationship rights.
Particular members (or at least one member, or network communicant) of such a network affinity group are/is vetted for entrepreneurial talent, and thereby selected by what we refer to as sourcing providers (such as media label companies) effectively as “sales agents”, also referred to herein as vetted network communicants, to offer, in a P2P sharing manner, various purchasable goods and/or services (“commercial deliverables”, including electronic-media deliverables) made available by sourcing providers, or (in a shared-rights, or plural rights-holder, manner) by both a vetted peer and a sourcing-provider, through a controlled, authorized-access-only, centralized, catalogue, or pool, of such deliverables.
These entrepreneurially vetted and selected peer-group members who become, in effect, specially selected surrogates for the associated, vetting sourcing providers in the invention-practice illustration now being given, are encouraged, i.e., incentivized, to innovate and propel their own talents and styles of sales promotions which accompany, or are solely focused upon, as an illustration, distributable-media file sharing. A peer in such a group, selected by sourcing providers to act as a vetted sales representative, may thus, at his or her option, effectively link with offers for distribution of affinity-interest media files to other peers, offers to those peers to consider the purchases of other goods and services from such a catalogue. Only a vetted peer, of course, has electronic authority in the practice of this invention to offer electronic catalogue access to others. Such sales-representative peers may also be authorized/encouraged to offer special goods and services of their own choosing or making along with catalogue-based deliverables of others. For example, an authorized, sales-representative peer might have a special personal collection of affinity-interest memorabilia/collectables which might be attractive to other affinity-interest peers. Permitted to do so within the authorization granted to that authorized peer, he or she could profitably link offers for sale of articles from such a personal collection with offers for the sharing of direct affinity (licensed media song file) subject matter.
With this unique, invention-offered, peer-entrepreneurial approach to file sharing —this proposed new paradigm—implemented with a network affinity group, one will note that much of the basic characteristic of today's “free” file-sharing behavior is actually “imprinted” on the paradigm, without there also being imprinted a situation of rights violations, such as copyright rights violations.
Any peer-promotion-resulting “catalogue-based sales hits”, which could include, simply, noticeable sales inquiries, as well, of course, as consummated sales, are appropriately tracked and credited to the offering peer, and appropriately fulfilled by actions, for example, of a system manager. For each such offering peer, a “sales hit” credit account may be kept, with different levels of activities which become summarized in such an account leading to various different kinds of recognitions/awards (hit-redemption values) which act, of course, as incentives for further sales promotional activities. Recognitions/awards may either be delivered automatically to a “deserving/earning” peer, or may be appropriately requested by such a peer.
As will become apparent to those skilled in the art, there are many ways, or facets, in which the basic practice proposed by the present invention, as just above outlined, can be implemented. That basic practice, as can be seen, involves visualizing the world of peer-to-peer file sharing not so much as the world alone (though it may be that) of exchange of particular affinity interest materials between peer group members, but more as an extensive-bandwidth linked-computers and servers network involving potential promoters of sales for a very wide range of goods and services (including rights-held electronic media), the promotions of sales for which lead to peer member awards and recognitions which in turn become incentives both for wider peer group participation, as well as for wider ancillary goods and services providers participation. In point of fact, implementation and practice of the present invention provides a clear opportunity for rights holders, for example, of copyrighted media material, and peer-to-peer file sharers, to see one another as important and cooperative allies in a very new form of extraordinarily widespread and highly active, linked computer and database commerce.
Lying centrally within the present invention, and made clearly evident from the just described basic practice of it, is the concept that it is the quality of natural, personal enthusiasm and “energy”, and entrepreneurial talent, of vetted file-sharing peers in a peer affinity group which becomes the harnessed driving force behind promoting the sales of ancillary and electronic-media goods and services in linkage with the basic sharing of affinity subject matter. This concept is to be distinguished from others wherein, for example, (a) ancillary commercial deliverables may be offered for sale to peers in a file-sharing group by virtue of being data-linked directly and specifically to particular shareable media files, or (b) network addresses of peers in a file sharing group are provided to owners/offerers of ancillary deliverables for “direct mail” solicitation. Neither of these approaches taps the important power and potential of individual peer promotion, peer enthusiasm, and peer entrepreneurship.
Another illustration of practice of the invention—one which is very specifically focused upon the invention facet to which the present continuation patent application is directed—involves the creation and network employment of a controlled-access catalogue of electronic deliverables which take the forms of electronic-machine applications (a form of electronic media), or so-called “Apps” (in the language of network communicants), that are popularly implementable on portable or handheld electronic devices, or on other computing devices, such as laptop and desktop computers. In the practice of this facet of the invention, the affinity-interest deliverables are associated with rights that are held both by a sourcing-provider, and by a vetted, contributing network communicant. Such dual rights-holding is similar to right-holding situations which exists in certain instances in the already generally discussed realms of music, video and film media, where content artists on the one hand, and underlying/undersupporting technical recording, editing, mixing, etc., persons on the other, blend their contributions in finally commercially distributable media. It is also similar to the known file-sharing practice involving peer addition to, or modification of, electronic media content created by someone else.
In this “Apps” setting of the invention, the sourcing-provider's rights in catalogue deliverables are based upon the creation/provision of underlying, specific computing-device(s)-compatible, “support-platform” (operating-system-enabling) software which forms a part of such deliverables after being made available for use by a vetted, contributing network communicant, and the vetted, contributing network communicant's rights are based upon a communicant-produced application which has been permissibly linked/integrated, so-to-speak, with that sourcing-provider's permission-tendered (offered), platform-enabling software.
And so, for example, in a typical practice sequence implemented following creation of an appropriate, controlled-access network catalogue, a network communicant who has developed an application which he, she or it wishes to link to platform-enabling software created and/or provided by the sourcing-provider, which software will enable utilization of the application on a particular computing device (such as a hand-held computing device) with respect to which the sourcing-provider's platform software is compatible, may present a request to the sourcing-provider to permit the making of such a linkage, thereafter, to have the linked-application made available as an electronic deliverable through the mentioned, controlled-access catalogue for electronic delivery/sharing over a network to other network communicants. The sourcing provider will then vet the network-communicant applicant for entrepreneurial capability, and the proposed application for commercial viability and acceptability in the controlled catalogue. Following successful vetting, the sourcing-provider will permit the inquiring network communicant to carry out linkage of his, her or its developed application with the sourcing-provider's platform software, and thereby empower/authorize the inquiring network communicant to become a contributing network communicant whose linked application may then be available for controlled-catalogue-access promotion by the contributing communicant for acquisition by other network communicants.
This is fundamentally the same practice as that which was first described above regarding vetting a peer, and furnishing subsequent authorization for that peer both (a) to have commercial-offering (sharing) access to the relevant controlled-access catalogue, as well as (b) to contribute shared-rights (with the sourcing-provider) subject matter to the catalogue.
Among many publicly available documents which provide background related to the present invention are the following: U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2002/0052885 A1 (use of embedded data with file sharing); U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2002/0138576 A1 (Method and system for generating revenue in a P2P network); U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2003/0076955 A1 (system and method for controlled copying and moving of content); U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2002/0186844 A1(user-friendly rights management systems and methods); U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2003/0131044 A1 (multi-level P2P network structure for peer and object discovery); U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2004/0024727 A1 (method and system of re-sharing files with modifications); U.S. Patent Application publication No. 2003/0078918 A1 (method, apparatus and system for file sharing between computers); U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2003/0212710 A1 (system for tracking activity and U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2003/0191720 A1 (electronic tracking tag). The disclosure contents of these publications are hereby incorporated herein by reference for background purposes.
The above referred to, and other, important features of the present invention will become more fully apparent as the description of this invention now unfolds in relation to discussions about the several accompanying drawings which illustrate, in block/schematic forms, a number of different ways of visualizing and illustrating manners of practicing the invention.
All of these drawing figures illustrate features of all facets of the invention.